grief is a house that disappears
by tonberrys-and-kuchikopi
Summary: [c. 1977-1995] In war, death is the only constant. (An exploration of the supposed deaths, real deaths and their fall out for Sirius in the Renescentia-verse)


Note: Title is from the following poem:

 _grief is a house_  
where the chairs  
have forgotten how to hold us  
the mirrors how to reflect us  
the walls how to contain us

 _grief is a house that disappears_  
each time someone knocks at the door  
or rings the bell  
a house that blows into the air  
at the slightest gust  
that buries itself deep in the ground  
while everyone is sleeping

\- Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere

 _ **July '77**_

The war came to Godric's Hollow a week and a half after Sirius and James had returned home.

In wrinkled clothes, both boys had fallen asleep in James' room while trying to figure out the best way to get Gryffindor back in the game for house points for their final year. Sirius knew that part of the reason they'd lost so abysmally the previous year was that Regulus had decided to be a pedantic utter twat about everything, taking points here, there and everywhere so they'd had to up their game. Until Slughorn and McGonagall had hauled their arses in and told them this all had to stop, they'd managed to plunge both Slytherin and Gryffindor into the depths leaving Hufflepuff to win out the year.

 _Hufflepuff._

Something had to be done.

Naturally prone to insomnia, Sirius was a light sleeper. James was not, he always ended up with limbs impossibly in a thousand directions and dead to the world once he was out. So when he felt James shaking his shoulder, he naturally assumed it was simply morning.

"Whattimeizzit?" Sirius mumbled, running his palm over his eyes.

"Sirius," James said, and almost at once, Sirius pushed himself up. His tone was entirely wrong. "Something's going on."

"What is it?"

James shook his head and grabbed him, by the arm, half dragging him over to the window. At first, Sirius couldn't see what was bothering him. Nothing looked particularly out of the ordinary. Same old Godric's Hollow. Then he saw it - lights. In passing, they could pass for a group illuminating their path on their way through the centre of town but then Sirius saw what he thought James meant: green, and red. No one would use those to get through the town. That was a duel.

James vanished his window and wands stuffed in their back pockets, they both headed landed on the grass outside with an umph. It had been exciting. They expected to see an Auror and Death Eater battle, so they'd tried to sneak down just to get a look it. However, when they'd gotten close enough to get a decent look at what was happening, both realised there was not an Auror in sight. People in masks flitted silently from one house to another. But what had those lights been, then?

A squelch sounded and in the dark, Sirius saw the vague outline of James' face grimace. Coming out to see an epic duel and stepping in shit was not a story you wanted to tell. Except it wasn't shit. James was pointing behind him, and Sirius turned to realise this was where one of the curses must have hit because they were standing in exploded remains - a partial torso in the street, James had stepped on what looked like a part of a limb. Sirius drew in a deep, unsteady breath and fought the urge to retch.

Further up the street, screams pierced the air.

In retrospect, Sirius should have known James would take off running towards the danger without a care for the fact they'd been trying to keep their heads down. James couldn't have gotten in there more than thirty seconds before him, but the spells were flying before he was through the door. It was nothing at all like dueling club, too fast, too violently tearing at their surroundings and utterly relentless. There was no etiquette to this. Where the hell was the Ministry?

For a panicked moment, Sirius realised he couldn't see James anymore. It wasn't until one of the armchairs knocked one of the Death Eaters right over he realised James standing with a middle aged woman on the landing, James locked eyes with him, grabbed the woman and apparated. Sirius followed suit, them both landing unceremoniously in the Potter's back garden.

"W-w-what…" The woman started.

James barged straight through his back door, yelling for his parents. By the time Mr. Potter was standing in the doorway, you could see the fire from the garden. Thankfully, he ushered in their neighbour (Mrs Kelly, daughter works in the hairdressers on the high street, very good with begonias as Sirius would find out over the course of the morning) but by the time the Ministry had shown up, all hell had broken loose.

The early hours of the morning were spent giving statements to the Department of Law Enforcement, getting told off and coddled in equal terms by James' parents and one extremely unexpected visit from their headmaster. He mostly spoke to both the Aurors and James' parents but had given them both sherbet licorice pots and recommended they get some sleep. In a strange way, it had broken the tension. They hadn't really spoken about it to each other, too busy relaying it to everyone who seemed to want to know why they'd been in the middle of town at three o'clock in the morning and they were nursing a couple of minor wounds that could have been so worse.

Up until that night, with the small exception of his Great Aunt Lycoris when he was five, Sirius had no first had experience with death. He couldn't say he cared much for it.

 _ **August '77**_

A side effect of living with James was that Sirius had gotten used to having projectiles thrown at his head. He'd also gotten good at throwing them back, so he felt it an unjust attack when his hands were full with eating breakfast and James lobbed parchment at his face. He scowled at James, before picking up the wadded up paper.

"You think you're funny, don't you?" James said, flopping onto the chair next to him. "I'm not falling for it!"

"I am funny," Sirius said, unrolling it to see what was going on. "But I dunno what you're on about."

"That!" James said, pointing to the letter.

Sirius read it over, and his eyebrows shot up his forehead. "Head boy?"

""You did a pretty good signature," James grumbled,"I'll give you that."

Sirius gave a bark laughter as he understood: James thought he'd sent him it as a wind up. In all honesty, Sirius kind of wished he had. But he hadn't, which meant…"James, mate. I didn't send this."

"Of course you sent it," James said. "Remus and Peter aren't despicable enough."

"There's no need to flatter me," Sirius said, handing him back the letter. "But I didn't send this."

"You didn't send this?" James asked, suddenly snatching he letter back off him.

"No," Sirius grinned. "Wish I had, but Dumbledore's one-upped me. Bloke knows everything."

"Shit," James said, suddenly sounding a little bit dazed. "Head boy."

"You got Head boy?" Mrs Potter said, entering the room with another set of letters.

"Er, yeah," James said, before he was instantly smothered by his mother. For such a tiny woman, she managed to completely cover him while James laughed and tried to wave her off.

"Head boy, head of the Quidditch team," Mrs Potter said happily, giving him what looked like a very wet kiss on the temples. "I'm so very proud of you."

"Mum," James said, looking approximately the colour of a tomato.

"Wait till your father gets up," She preened, before going back to the letters. "Oh, Sirius, there's one here for you."

"Must be Head Girl," James said.

Sirius wasted a perfectly good slice of toast to hit him in the head. It was worth it, though. He managed to nail him right on the glasses.

Mrs. Potter, utterly used to their antics at this point and willing to indulge them providing nothing was broken, reached across the table to hand him the letter. It was a peculiar thing. For a start, it was on the kind of expensive parchment that no one he knew anymore actually bought. For another, the wax seal was unmistakable as the House of Black. No one in that House, save for Andromeda, had wanted the slightest thing to do with him after he'd legged it. Regulus had made that abundantly clear with his shirty behaviour. So why would someone send him a letter with the seal?

Pulling the letter out, he glanced over it before reading. Of all the things he'd expected, it hadn't been a letter from his uncle inviting him out. For a start, he was persona non grata among most of the summer home inhabitants and if seen, there'd been nothing but trouble (which admittedly made him want to do it). There was also the fact that he hadn't seen his uncle in a couple of years, he didn't usually keep residence in the country and he supposed it was possible, though unlikely, no one had told him he'd left.

"So what's it really?" James asked.

Sirius realised he'd stopped talking mid-conversation to reread the letter, and found the Potters staring. "My uncle's about," He shrugged, "Asked if I wanted to come see him."

"Is this Andromeda's dad?" James asked, reaching over to nick his toast off the plate like the thieving bastard he was.

Sirius snorted hard. "Are you joking? The only thing Cygnus Black would invite me to would be my own execution." He handed James the letter. There was nothing to hide. "My uncle Alphard's the middle one. He's decent, decent enough not to be around the rest of them if he doesn't have to be."

"So the invite's legitimate?" James said, through his full mouth.

"Probably," Sirius said, trying to think why he'd want to. "He might be doing it as a wind up, to Mum. Of course, she'll flay me if she sees me."

James smirked, "Guess you'll have to make sure you're not seen then."

Sirius nodded with a decidedly fake grave tone, "I'll have to think of something."

Somehow, in the year since he'd been there, Sirius expected Porth Iago to have changed. It hadn't. He'd been spending summers there his whole life and it had barely changed, why would this year be any different simply because he wasn't supposed to be there at all? Except that he'd been _invited_ so he had every damn right to be there. James had offered to come with him, and by offered, threatened to sit on him until he said yes but with some not-so-gentle encouragement to let him handle his own shit, Sirius had gone by himself. He refused to be afraid of anyone here.

He found his uncle easily, as everyone else seemed to want to sit on the sandy beach and not the rundown pebble one. Yet there he was, beach umbrella overcasting a lounge chair and a pile of leather bound books and amber liquid hovering next to him. Alphard could be a little eccentric, sure, but Sirius would take eccentric over whatever his mother was any day of the week.

"Ah," He said, when Sirius padded down beside him. "The wanderer returns."

"I hope you're talking about you," Sirius replied, but not unkindly. "I'm not meant to be here."

"I don't remember this ever stopping you before." Alphard made a hand gesture, and a second beach chair appeared. "Do sit down, I'm going to get a crick."

Sirius rolled his eyes, but sad down. For all he knew, it was true and not an attempt to instigate civil conversation. He remembered his parents mentioning some bad health for him the year before. "When did you get back to England?"

His uncle looked at him. "I believe it's called Wales."

Sirius slouched, and groaned. He'd had enough of this crap from Regulus all year. "You know what I mean."

"Do I need to run my itinerary through you?" His uncle asked.

"Only when you ask here," Sirius replied coolly.

After a beat, Alphard simply nodded. "I was curious if you were still in one piece."

"Just about," Sirius replied, gesturing to himself. It hadn't been all that dramatic at all, in the end. It could almost have gone unnoticed if not for the gossip. "Are you?"

"Just about." Alphard smiled at him, causing him to smile in return. "How fares life outside the House?"

"It's been great," Sirius let the smile grow and warmth and affection slide into his tone. "Mrs. Potter is trying in vain to teach me to cook, I think i've just about got the charms working on the bike and we're trying to figure out what we want to do after school."

"Good predicted scores?" He ventured.

How Sirius had landed himself in a family with a whole bunch of nerds, he had no idea. Still, his scores were a point of pride for him. "Probably an E or two. I've been a bit distracted."

"So I've heard," Alphard said, reaching down for a drink.

"From who?" Sirius asked, curious.

"Andromeda, of course."

That took Sirius by surprise; he hadn't considered he hadn't been the only person his uncle had contacted. "Do you make it a habit to talk to people you aren't supposed to?"

"Of course," Alphard said, mildly. "How else would you ever hear anything but the same old drab?"

It was a good point, but still…"They'll go ballistic if they find out. Mum'll do her nut."

"Oh dear, do you imagine she'll tattle to Father? Shall I get grounded?" His tone was heavy with sarcasm and amusement, and Sirius supposed that yes, he had still been thinking of being held accountable as a lifelong inconvenience. "I'm not a child, and neither are you. Was that not the point of humiliating them in front of everyone? To get away from such constraints?"

It had in part, but the more Sirius had spent thinking of it over the last year, the more he'd decided that wasn't it at all. He'd left due to the fundamental difference of not giving a shit about what sort of blood he had, that he did not think it was better than anyone else's and that this would inevitably lead to him having to leave at some point.

"I don't think I'm better than anyone else," Sirius said, by way of his own defense.

"Yes, you do." It didn't sound accusatory, so much as pointed.

"Alright," Sirius admitted, because he was a better wizard than most but that came down to skill. It had nothing to do with his blood. "I don't think I'm better than someone because of my blood or my name. I think I'm better when I'm better and I'm not when I'm not. I sure as shit don't want to go around offing muggleborn's for some supposed inferiority or contamination of the blood. They were never going to understand that, so I left." He didn't know how he felt about it apparently having been considered humiliating. Good and discouraged by it not feeling as good as he thought it might.

"Seems a bit dramatic for that," Alphard allowed.

"I also fucking hate Death Eaters," Sirius shrugged. "If I had to listen to them being praised one more second, I was going to lose it. I'd had enough."

"I suppose it's as good a reason as any," His uncle allowed, settling back in this seat. "Though you could have at least tried for something a bit more scandalous."

"You'll have to ask Regulus instead," Sirius shrugged, unable to keep the smile off his face at the concept. "But don't be surprised if his idea of scandal is not returning a book until the day after it was due."

 _ **November '77**_

Sirius learned of Alphard's death by accident in the end.

The week before the Gryffindor-Slytherin match, James had become obsessive about practicing every change they got. He refused not to finish his last year as captain in leading place and the entire team knew it. Sirius was beginning to regret joining the team the year before, since both Remus and Peter could sleep to reasonable times. It seemed that McGonagall knew it too, because as they sat down after practice on Friday morning, she told James (and ostensibly the rest of them) the pitch would be free tomorrow if they wanted to get extra time in. Sirius was pretty sure that James would have laid one on her if Evans hadn't been looking and he wasn't sure McGonagall would've hexed him for his trouble.

"Isn't that the Slytherin team's practice slot?" Vance asked, having migrated her way to their table for dinner.

"It's been cancelled," McGonagall said. "They're a player short."

Curious, Sirius looked over to check the team and found he couldn't see a few people. Actually, he couldn't see his brother or even Rosier. "Who are they short?"

McGonagall looked at him for a moment, "Their seeker."

"Their seeker's always been short," James replied.

He both hated and appreciated that she did not say 'your brother'. Something was definitely going on,then.

It wasn't something he gave too much mind to, until James ended up dragging him to meet Evans after one of the Slug Club dinners. He didn't enjoy feeling like a third wheel, but apparently James was not a big boy enough to hang out there by himself and 'casually' run into her. Casual, his arse. He practically bounded up to her the second she came out. The pining had been terrible, but this post-pining lovesickness was even worse.

"Hello, boys." Slughorn said, not at all surprised by their appearance. He was ridiculous enough that he probably had a bit of coin on those two dating. "Should you be out this late?"

"I'll take them back," Evans said, with a smirk. Gross.

"Oh, and Sirius, I was sorry to hear about your uncle. I taught him as well, you know."

Sirius stopped dead. Which uncle? Slughorn had taught half the family at this point. "Which uncle?" Sirius asked.

"I'm sorry, perhaps I shouldn't have said anything with things...as they are," Slughorn looked a mite uncomfortable, but Sirius wanted to know.

"Which uncle?" He reiterated, more firmly.

"Erm, that would be Alphard," He said, giving a half hearted smile. "Again, my condolences, I must get this all cleared away."

It hadn't been unexpected, but it had hurt a little nonetheless. Merlin, that funeral would be awful. He was almost glad he wasn't going and equally, irrationally angry Regulus hadn't thought that he at least deserved to know that one. But of course he didn't. He didn't care anymore, if he ever did in the first place.

"Sirius?" James asked.

Sirius waved him off, "Go do things I don't ever want to hear about it, I'll head back."

He was sad, yes. A little angry. Not unexpected didn't mean it wasn't a little painful, but it was what it was. It had been his choice to leave and eventually, it would all die out until his own generation.

Aside from that night and a little lingering melancholia, Sirius had ultimately expected that to be the end of it. He can't imagine anyone was more shocked than him when it turned out not to be.

Alphard was not the first death in the family, but he was the first out of people Sirius had known well enough to know them rather than vaguely know them by sight. He didn't really remember Great (Great) Aunt Belvina, having been only two at the time and a little preoccupied with the stresses of having a new baby in the baby in the house. He could sort of remember Great Aunt Lycoris, in that he knew this was his Grandfather's little sister. The problem with pureblood relations is you were related to everyone and you needed a chart to figure out how you were related to them but were expected the same level of sincerity. At least at his Uncle's death, he could feel sincerely sad. He'd been ridiculous, but that had been why he was fun.

He received the letter about a week later. It wasn't completely out of the blue, his uncle had a lot of clutter and it was a nice gesture. He'd gotten permission from McGonagall to go and see about it with Mrs. Potter and return later in the evening.

When Sirius got back, James was still frantically planning for their game the next day against Slytherin and muttering to himself. He'd been muttering to himself in his sleep all week, Remus had threatened to slip him something if he didn't stop. However, in a true showing of friendship, he stopped when Sirius came in.

"How'd it go?" He asked, trying to bend backwards enough to see the board again.

"Your mum is an excellent date," Sirius replied.

James smacked him on the arm. "So, what'd you end up? Is it the dragon stuff?"

"No," Sirius shrugged, trying to be more casual about it than he felt. "He said I should have the chance to make the kind of life I want and left me a decent bit of gold instead."

"Oh," James said, awkwardly. "That's decent of him."

Sirius nodded, putting his stuff away. "Mum'll be going spare," He said. "Disowned is supposed to mean disinherited."

He'd thought about stopping at the dungeons before he'd come up. He'd thought about waiting until tomorrow when Regulus couldn't ignore him because it seemed like at least one person he was related to seemed to understand that he suffocated without his freedom and his ability to choose and maybe this wasn't so bad. He'd talked himself out of it. It was ridiculous. You couldn't have both worlds and he'd made his choice.

"Only wish I could have seen her face," He added, as James grinned in return knowing that winding up Walburga Black had long been a passion project for him.

(Sometimes, if he really thought about it, he even felt a little badly about it. But it was just easier for her to hate his guts and vice versa. He didn't think he could do what Regulus did, try to live up to the mad woman's inescapable and unrealistic standards in some vague hope she might actually care about him when he was sure that if she had ever had a heart, she'd had it removed long before her children came along. Caring about someone who can't, or won't, care about you is just a recipe for getting yourself hurt and he wasn't a total masochist. He was always going to be a disappointment, and it was easier to be one than to get his hopes up that it might get better some day if he just did the right things and was extra good. His brother was stupid and he'd get his heart broken because he'd let them.)

"Ready to obliterate Avery?" James asked, breaking him out of his reverie.

"Always," Sirius replied.

This was his family, right here. Sure, James got him up at stupid o'clock to practice and Remus got exasperated with him too much and Peter could try so hard to be likable that he'd just piss him off and now there was Lily Evans, and sometimes Marlene and Emmeline would plant herself at their table and they'd go back to Godric's Hollow and Mrs. Potter would laugh as she tried to figure out how to sieve when they made biscuits or give them blankets if they fell asleep in the front room and Mr. Potter with his crossword puzzles and his crazy degnoming schemes for the garden and even Andromeda and her husband trying to heal the world and teach their daughter animal noses at the dinner table weren't a good idea. It was good, and it was bad and it was what he thought family should feel like.

He needed to let go. He wasn't stupid enough to hang on where he wasn't wanted. He'd been given the means to make his own path and sure as hell wasn't going to waste it.

James lost his father in the summer of '78.

You could be forgiven for thinking it was war related, as Bloody July happened in '78 and Godric's Hollow had been a bloodbath. But Mr. Potter had died mere weeks after they'd left school, qualifications in their pockets and an invite to the Order of the Phoenix on the horizon. Sirius had moved out barely a fortnight before, he and Remus settling into a bit of a fixer upper flat in Camden. Sirius loved that flat, enough that it didn't bother him that he was less than an hour's walk from where he'd grownup and they'd been making so many plans. They were going to try and cook a Sunday dinner, have the Potters' over for it but it just hadn't happened.

It had been peaceful, James had told him later. Sirius had found him sitting with his legs dangling off the roof with cheap whisky and tears. In a way, that had been worse. There was no one to blame for it. He was simply there and then gone.

His passing had marked the beginning of the cascade. The Death Eaters had really been living up to the Death part and people were beginning to die in heavier numbers. They had gotten bolder. It had been no real surprise that someone had gotten caught in the crossfire. What had been a shock had been that it'd been Orion Black.

At this point, Sirius realised he had lied to himself. It had still hurt. Even if he had barely seen his father since he'd left for Hogwarts, there'd been a dull ache that drove him to the funeral and a worse wound when he'd ran into his brother. Sirius had not been able to get the image out of his mind, the bone-white mask in the snow, the sounds of the attack, the fact his brother had looked so damn young and miserable and he'd made a mistake that would likely cost him either his life or hiss freedom, or both. The thought drove him to the point of a very prolonged strangled panic that gripped him when he didn't expect it.

It seemed that Sirius was simply stupid too. He could say he didn't care about any of it, but it still hurt. He could claim he wasn't unnerved by the sad, detached miniature adult he'd been confronted with at the funeral but it would be a lie. He could claim he wasn't disturbed at the thought that somewhere out there someone may have had their life snuffed out by the little kid he used to pull into trees as a child but it nagged at him.

He didn't want to talk about it. He didn't even want to think about it. It didn't make it easier when the time came.

Mrs. Potter had passed almost six months after his father and with some satisfaction, Sirius noted it hurt more. It had been two months before James and Lily were meant to be getting married and the shockwave led it all into devastation. Everyone had known Mrs. Potter. She tended to mother everyone she came across, so no one was in the mood for any sort of celebration.

Then, a couple of weeks later, James and Lily had decided they weren't going to wait on the big wedding. They wanted to get married right now and Sirius and Marlene were dragged along as witnesses. It had been quiet, right up until the raging party Marlene had pulled off for afterwards happened and lifted everyone's spirits. Mrs. Potter had loved a good party, and so did the new Mrs. Potter.

In the midst of it all, Regulus Black had disappeared. Sirius wouldn't hear about it for a while, about him supposedly getting drunk at the leavers' do and having to be taken home and that no one had seen him since. It wasn't until the letter months later.

There was a fucking insistent owl at his window.

Sirius wasn't crazy, so he waited to see what the owl might be carrying before he let it in but it just looked like a white, embossed parchment. Together with the starkly white bird, Sirius had some idea of who it was from. He had not spoken to Narcissa in years, but her style lingered: everything was clean, white and over the top. She and Malfoy bloody deserved each other.

"What's that?" Remus asked, still in his flannel pyjamas and housecoat around their breakfast table. (He refused to wear the wolf slippers Sirius had gotten him)

Sirius waved the letter. "It's from Narcissa." Then clarified, "That's Andromeda's sister." _And Bellatrix's_ went unsaid.

"What does she want?" Remus asked, clearly catching onto what had been unsaid.

"Regulus is missing," Sirius said.

"Again?"

Sirius shook his head, "Still. Apparently no one, not my dear mother, not Bellatrix, not my Grandfather have heard anything from him since he left school."

Though he had never confirmed it to Remus that Regulus was a Death Eater (only James had known, told 2/3 into chain smoking his way through the night after he'd found out) he could certainly have guessed. The problem with that was that people were fighting back. Not always (rarely) successfully but they were. The idea of Regulus' body being unidentified as someone let loose a blasting curse that destroyed his skull or reduced him to ash was enough to make his stomach and turn and humiliating pin-pricks come to his eyes.

"Why is she asking you?"

Sirius shrugged hard, "Dunno. Maybe she thinks I've kidnapped him and lured him into my traitorous ways."

 _I should have,_ he thought to himself, as he steeled himself to tell Narcissa no and to go to hell. He should have done it when he'd left, or he should have done it the November before or he sure as hell should have done it at their father's funeral when he looked ready to fall to pieces. He should have done it regardless, if only to keep him front hurting anyone (getting hurt) and wait till this awful war was over.

But he hadn't, and no one knew where Regulus was. He could still turn up. It had been almost five months, but maybe he'd just found a really good book and a quiet place to read it and lost track of the world. It could happen.

 _ **July '80**_

The Potter house at breakfast was always bonkers. Evans - _Lily_ \- being about to burst hadn't changed that. Peter and James were in an argument over the Quidditch cancellation after the last match had been attacked, Remus was reading through the paper and Sirius was ostensibly helping Lily with the breakfast but was mostly making a nuisance of himself by getting in her way until she started threatening to throw cutlery.

"That's not very motherly of you," Sirius chided, pushing himself up the counter out of her reach.

"I'm going to hex you the next time you refer to me as in a fragile state," Lily snapped at him.

"Actually, that does sound like mum to me," Sirius admitted, with a snigger.

He heard James yelp almost immediately. "Did you just compare my beautiful wife to _your_ mother?" he asked, incredulously.

Sirius pulled a face and tried his best to look apologetic. "Yeah, sorry, Evans."

"Lily. Li-ly."

"Li-ly," He sounded out, mostly to be a brat. It was well worth the orange James threw at his head. "No one deserves to be compared to that old cow."

"Walburga Black," Remus said suddenly.

Sirius looked at him, bemused. Remus had watch with the Order the night before, so his eyes were drooping a little into his tea. "Yes, Remus." Sirius said, slowly. "That would be my dear old mum. Do you want a nap?"

"No," Remus said, looking up from the table. "Well, yes, but that's not. There's an announcement in the paper."

Sirius' stomach rolled, though he would never have admitted it later. He knew Remus had been looking at obituaries and missing persons. The Order tended to make notes to follow up on what they could. "What, the old hag finally kick off this mortal coil?"

"No, it's -" Remus stopped, for a moment. "A funeral announcement. For your brother."

It wasn't that Sirius had forgotten he was missing. It was something that tended to hit him now and then, with new books coming out or seeing one of the people he went to school with or even battling Death Eaters (though this was more tricky). It was that he'd heard nothing more, assumed he'd shown back up having possibly gotten drunk for the first time and life had resumed. But he hadn't seen mentions of him anywhere.

"They find a body?" He asked, curtly.

"I don't know," Remus said, as the room became irritatingly silent. "It just gives the time and date."

"Highgate?" Of course it'd be fucking Highgate.

There was a beat before Remus nodded. He knew why they were silent. They were waiting to see if he'd say he wanted to go, or for him to argue about it. When James had found out he'd gone to his father's funeral alone, he'd threatened to hit him if he ever did something like that again. But he didn't really know what to think about it. He only knew what he should think about it

(Hadn't he been trying to get away from saying what he should say instead of what he felt when he'd left?)

"Sorry, Lily." He said, in his most mournful tone.

Lily, leaning on the counter in a way that accentuated her gigantic stomach, looked him confused. "For what?"

"Another Death Eater dead and you can't even drink to it," Sirius pointed out. He looked back to the lads, daring them to say anything about it. "Dunno what you lot are looking so miserable about. One less Death Eater in the world sounds like a great thing to me."

James had given him that look, the one he hated being given. The one that said he knows he's full of shit. He wasn't in the mood for it. So it was official, he'd been gone for about a year, this didn't mean anything.

"Hope your insides are a better cook than your outsides," Sirius pointed out. "Something's burning."

He hopped off the counter and went back to making a nuisance of himself. Life went on.

That should have been the end of it, but his treacherous feet didn't take him home afterwards. He left Remus asleep on James' chair, after drawing on him in the obligatory way, since Lily promised to send him home once he woke up.

Instead of his front door, he wound up at Andromeda's. She didn't look surprised at all. He didn't need to point this out to her either, because she simply said,"I saw the notice." without preamble.

"I'm surrounded by swots," Sirius mumbled, but let her usher him in as if she'd asked him over and he hadn't just shown up at her door without warning/ He rationalised it as her always being happier if she can boss someone about and it had nothing to do with his own feeling lost

"What were your results again?" Andromeda replied mildly, navigating him into the front room rather than out into the garden.

He flopped on the oversized couch and flipped her off.

One of the things he loved about Andromeda's was that it wasn't sterile. It smelled like a home, like someone had been cooking, like someone had been playing on these couch cushions, a breeze coming through the doors to the outside patio. The WWN was playing in the kitchen, the television was on in the living room, people could be heard outside. He was happy to sit there slumped into the cushions for a while. Andromeda sat down on the arm chair too, willing to wait for whatever it was would happen.

"You know what he was, don't you?"Sirius said quietly, after a while.

"I had some idea," Andromeda responded. She had perched herself forward on the chair, mindlessly watching outside the window. "He was a very sweet child, but I haven't seen him since he started school. "

"S'alright," Sirius said, tapping his hand against the arm of the couch nervously. "I saw him plenty after that and I didn't know him either."

"Is that what you're telling yourself?" Andromeda asked mildly.

"It's true!" Sirius heard himself raise his voice and upon Andromeda raising her eyebrows neatly, tried to calm himself down. "The kid I thought I knew, he would never have joined the Death Eaters."

Unless he already had. Had Sirius simply not known him at all?

"I once thought the same of Bellatrix," Andromeda said, conspiratorially.

"But she's Bellatrix!" Sirius said, as if that explained it.

"Yes," Andromeda admitted, "But she's smart, strong and above all else, my big sister. I didn't want to consider it. To think so ill of her, I didn't want to know."

"They won't do it properly," Sirius tossed out, more of an angry statement than an answer to what Andromeda was saying. Regulus was not Bellatrix. He wasn't violent, he wasn't temperamental. It was hard to see his mother or cousin in Regulus at all. He was _passive_ and always had been. ""They'll talk about his honouring his family. That he was an example to pure-blood everywhere and gone before his time. They'll talk about his intelligence and how he was perfect. They could recycle our fathers eulogy and just change the name."

"You don't think he would have liked that?"

"I don't care if he would have liked it!" Sirius sat up, feeling the numbness start to fade into anger. "He shouldn't be remembered as some final bastion of a dying house. He should be remembered for those ridiculous books he read and always seemed to have to hand no matter where or what we were doing, that he was so prissy but he loved Quidditch and it didn't make much sense. They won't say he was funny. They won't talk about him. They'll talk about what they thought he was and fucking bury him and move on like he didn't mean anything at all!"

Andromeda leaned over and pressed her hand against his, gripping tight. "I miss him too."

Sirius didn't know what to say to that, so he just gripped her hand back while they watched something mindless. In a detached sort of way, he could remember trying to do this with Regulus at their father's funeral but it had felt awkward, wrong, like being caught doing something that just wasn't acceptable at all instead of merely trying to comfort his brother.

"I don't understand why he did it," Sirius said, steadfastly watching a cartoon dog run from an animated suit of armour.

"No, I don't imagine you do."

Sirius looked at her sharply. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I've wondered if it's a Gryffindor trait," Andromeda said, a little cheekily. "You can admit that you love him and he was a good person or you can admit he was a Death Eater and wanted nothing to do with you after you left. Both of these things are true, but you only acknowledge one or the other. You see the world only as one way or another, when for the rest of us, sometimes it's both."

"Both doesn't make sense," Sirius said, petulant.

"People don't always make sense," Andromeda said gently.

Sirius couldn't argue that, but damn it, he'd wanted to.

With that, Sirius had felt he'd acknowledged something. He'd acknowledged that he was a little sad about it and that this was alright, because someone else was. It should have made it easier to move on. He had his closure. The funeral came and went and he ignored it for helping James paint the nursery and pointedly not talking about it.

Still, the feeling persisted.

He didn't really know what feeling it was, just that it was strong and sickly and distracting. There was sadness to it, anger too and even deciding to look into it, all he really found were dead ends and the creeping realisation he was driving himself crazy over someone who'd joined Voldemort's merry band of murderers as soon as his back was turned. There was no reason to feel a gaping hole there. There was certainly no reason to feel guilty. Regulus had known his door would always be open if he were willing to make that step. He _knew_ that.

Didn't he?

Sirius had made the right decision. He had to leave. He would driven himself insane to stay, or worse, hurt someone. Regulus had belonged there in a way that he didn't. He was a Black, he couldn't be coerced into doing something so ridiculous as becoming a Death Eater unless he'd wanted to. He didn't regret it. He might miss some idealised version of what his family could have been, but why should he when he had a family? James had said it himself: they wanted him to be godfather because they wanted him to officially be part of their family. To be able to take care of the baby if anything (and he felt his stomach lurch) were to happen to them, he would stay with family.

He had to let this go.

It would be more than a week before he'd make it up to grave.

He hadn't meant to come at all. He didn't want to see what people had put on it, paying lip service to a seventeen year old (eighteen in a couple of weeks, he would have been eighteen) they barely knew or cared about. He didn't want to start a fight running into someone he didn't know. But still, his feet had brought him here and he needed to have a long talk with them about their terrible, traitorous behaviour of late.

He found his father first, the sleeping snake curled around the stones declaring his death the year before. He moved past it. Maybe he just needed to see it to believe it. See the words etched in stone. To see his birth and death dates written in precise script. To see the inscription of beloved son, as if his mother had ever loved anything at all let alone her children.

It was quiet there; it was well after midnight, but even still, it seemed serene. The kind of place you could curl up at the tree's and read or think quietly for a while without the world nothing else, he thought that Regulus would probably have liked that.

Sirius had tensed when he'd heard the footsteps. He'd been sitting on the tomb of one of his great-great grandparents (probably Phineas, now he thought about it) for a while, enough go to through half a pack of cigarettes and mostly lost in thought. He couldn't say exactly what he was he'd been thinking of, but it hadn't been uncommon for he and Regulus when they were young to sit for hours with their books. It felt a little like that.

His wand was in his hand and he took a breath, only for James to appear through the arches.

"What are you doing here?" Sirius asked, then flinched at the rasping sound of his throat. Chain-smoking was never great for his throat. He really had to find a better coping mechanism than that or drinking till he was ready to fall over when things got hard.

"Talking to you," James said, looking around curiously.

"How'd you know I'd be here?" Sirius asked.

James gave him the look, the annoying all-knowing one. "You don't half ask stupid questions sometimes, Pads."

He supposed that was true. He'd known, somehow, to find James drinking Ogden's on the roof when his father had died without being told. Maybe it was just the way they were.

James pulled himself onto the tomb as well, giving a sharp inhale as he sat ass on cold stone. "You find out what happened to him?"

Sirius shook his head. He still didn't know if there was a body in there. All he knew for sure was that no one had reported it in the Order or the Department of Law Enforcement. The most logical explanation was they'd tried to make him do something he wasn't comfortable with (Andromeda had said he was sweet as a kid, but he was kinder than he should have been, needed to be, than he himself had ever been) and he'd tried to duck out. You didn't leave the Death Eaters. If they tried, they tortured you and/or killed you. It had been an image he hadn't been able to get out of his head for days. It kept rolling around with the last time he'd seen him going into his bedroom the night he'd left, with him standing and trying to look like an adult while dressed up in Death Eater garb in the snow two and a half years later, with the clenching, lost looking teenager he'd left to deal with his father's funeral. Their father's funeral.

"Stupid idiot," Sirius said, trying to bark a laugh and feeling furious with himself when it sounded too wet to be one.

"Stupid war," James said.

It wasn't until James and Lily he'd really discovered the body of someone he'd known. Fenwick had ended up in pieces, Dearborn was still missing, Marlene McKinnon and Lily had found the Prewett's, the McKinnon's and Bones' had been massacres dealt with by the Department of Law Enforcement. Meadowes had been captured and killed. In a lot of ways, he'd been lucky there but it hadn't felt lucky. It hadn't really felt like anything, until he'd seen Peter and all it had felt was white-hot anger.

(In truth, he couldn't really remember the night in detail despite going over it again and again. It felt out of reach, like a bad dream he knew the details of but couldn't fully comprehend. Somehow, that made it worse.)

Anger is a useful emotion. It can keep you going when nothing else will. Sirius had learned that in Grimmauld Place and along with his own little secret magical ability, he'd learned it again in Azkaban. Despite what his selective memories were telling him, he wasn't a quitter and he was not about to give up while Wormtail still drew breath. Sirius always focussed better when he had something to do and someone to protect, and there were no shortage of either once Voldemort returned.

Death is final. It's a line in the sand that cannot be undone.

Except when one is a Dark Lord finding a way to cheat the system or a particularly crafty teenager who can fake their own death.

"I could kill him!" Sirius said to himself, dropping the protesting photographs on the side into a bag.

"Would that not negate the point of his return?" Phineas piped up, sticking his nose where he wasn't wanted instead of when he was just like usual.

"Don't you start," Sirius grumbled at him. "I know you're overjoyed to the resident heir around. Regulus and his fucking paintings and his fucking house elves..."

"Not that you're jealous at all."

"Bit high and mighty to consider yourself something to be jealous about," Sirius snapped back. It wasn't jealousy.

Of all the scenarios Sirius had supposed, the one that placed Regulus both alive, well and elsewhere had come up as the least likely. That he would break away from all of his other influences, decide he didn't want to be a Death Eater anymore and tell no one seemed so unlikely that it was borderline insane. Regulus had never shown that kind of strength before. Sirius had wanted to see it in him, desperately at times but he couldn't think of a time when he had.

However, this was what had happened.

It had happened and he had chosen to go through it alone.

As much as it helped not be the only person here all of the time, it also hurt to watch all over again how much better his brother could acclimitise to this house and this world. It was not knowing whether he had already began the journey to the Death Eaters when Sirius had left and simply not even tried to talk to him, it was not knowing if he'd managed to just stick it out till he'd been of legal age if he could have stopped him from getting into this trouble in the first place and it was the constant reminder that he'd been failing everyone for as long as he'd known.

He'd been a failure of a son to his parents, because he couldn't be what they wanted and his mother never did miss a beat to compare him to his practically perfect brother. He'd been a failure as a brother, in that the fundamental protection from doing something as stupid as joining the Death Eaters had been a spectacular disaster. He'd failed in trusting the wrong person, and cost James and Lily their lives, Remus his friends and himself twelve years of his life. (It had been supposed to cost him all of it, but even death was a massive failure left to him) He was failing Harry right now, by not being able to take care of him or help him or even really talk to him. He supposed it wasn't Regulus' fault, but being around him just seemed to once again remind him of his own shortcomings. He'd even have made a better vigilante - quiet, measured, intelligent and covert. That wasn't jealousy.

(A little envy, perhaps.)

"He screwed up his entire life to the point he had leave it behind just to survive," Sirius pointed out sullenly.

"And yours is going swimmingly," Phineas commented, right as Sirius nailed him right in the portrait with a balled up rag.

"He came back," Sirius said, surprised by the sudden urge to express it. "Even if he knew it may kill him, he _chose_ to come back." He may have chosen to leave first, but he'd been a stupid kid then. He didn't know what sort of adult he'd be. He'd speculated, but he had never thought he would ever see the adult in question. Somewhere between the anger, confusion, loss and guilt, he was still glad he had gotten the chance to truly see his brother as a man rather than a pale, shaken teenage he'd been remembering for a decade and a half. To know that if anything, he'd surpassed what he'd hoped he would be as an adult: braver, stronger, happier and ready to do the right thing.

It had been a long time since Sirius had felt anything worth being proud of in his blood family, but as usual with Regulus, he surpassed expectations and because of it, they had something that never happened. A chance to try again, with a few more scars and a lot more history, but a chance nonetheless. He had to at least try. He owed it to the person he had been sixteen years before, because he had already lost him once and there was every chance he would have to go through it again and he was so damned sick of losing people. Parents, friends, good and bad.

Voldemort was back and any of them could die at any time. There wasn't time for their shit right now.

( _They could lose.)_


End file.
